Ooo! When?

I had 7 year old gas --- in my car --- when I bought it. That's how long it had sat in a garage. (I've probably told that story about ten times by now.)

Keep us posted.


---

Another fun ForkenSwift note: jumper

Good news on that reversible motor. Are you thinking of keeping it in one gear?

I should say that's a gating item. I need to get all that squared away before I set the car down (off the stands, it has about 3" of ground clearance, so it's hard to fix stuff underneath). Once back on terra firma, I need to rotate the engine to verify nothing's stuck, and prime the oil pump (rolling the car in gear is the most practical way I can think of doing this). Atleast it has fresh 20w50 oil w/ stabilizers in it. Then I need to see if the starter still works. It's kind of like "if I had some ham, I could have ham and eggs...if I had eggs." :)

..of course, I should test the ignition for sparks too before I waste time cranking the beast.

Oh, I can almost smell it now. :D

No, it occurred to me
I bet!

This week Ivan made up the motor

Some pics... Clicky-zoomy...

Well, here's a bit of a blunder:

Our motor does NOT reverse direction by re

First, thanks for sharing your experiennce, especially the small blunders. It's important to see where the difficult areas are. I found few things as infuriating as the many procedural manuals (computer and automotive alike) that said something like "simply remove the bearing and the shaft will come right out..." when it really took hours of hard struggling because I missed an important but undocumented step.

Good news that you have a 'sister' motor on which you can make your wiring experiments before "simply removing" the main motor. :D

Does this mean you need to retest the brush timing in the proper direction?

[quote=Silveredwings]...missed an important but undocumented step.

Good news that you have a 'sister' motor on which you can mak

Not sure about this part. Need to do some more reading and looking at the motors.

So, apparently the easy way to tell if a motor

Hook 'em together and see which one wins. :D

Hoo ha! That's a good one :)

omg wow i'm so jealous... i really want an EV for my short trips ... oh man when I visit Toronto can I see this baby? Maybe even encourage me to work on my own EV! Man if I can build a simple EV that would seat four and would give me AT LEAST 30 km range per charge oh man I would be drooling all over it.

Your experience is truly appreciated! I hope your EV runs! Man now your tanks will truly rock because you'll never have a cold trip ever again in your Gas Geo!

SUPER JEALOUS!!!!!

Sure thing, Phil. But I'm closer to Ottawa than Toronto :) You'd have to give me about 10 days notice to drive it to Toronto!

You know there's a pretty active EV association in Vancouver. You could probably see some cars and get advice: https://www.veva.ca

May not work out that way. Just like the bicycle cargo trailer , the EV is going to displace even more local driving where I consistently get better MPG than highway trips. The Blackflea tank averages are probably going to go down when the ForkenSwift goes on the road.

Pulled the motor out again this evening -

It couldn't be much cooler if it removed itself. In fact, if you ... er, um, forget what I said, bad idea. :)

Exactly what I was thinking (I know, big help ain't I).

It sounds great, I'll be watching.

Well, we tested the motor today in both

I read that it's actually possible to overspeed series wound motors if you run them w/o a load even though speed limits current flow. I would think the comm timing could have a huge effect on how the field and armature fluxes interact. I have no personal experience though.

You're right about overspeeding a se

The EV list folks seem to be leaning tow

Great info.

The motor guru has spoken.

Neat photos of motor guts!

Futzed with the brush position

Wicked cool! (as they say around here)

Mehbe I'll start saving immediately, hmmm...

What an inspiration!

Also been reading up on motor "red lines".

Wow. That's amazing...I never knew you could blow a motor up like that! Like he said...good thing his friend wasn't troubleshooting under the car when it happened. Glad he got it fixed though...I bet it was $!

...but not like throwing a rod in an ICE. :)

Damn, I need to start posting on the EV list again. Finals are over, so I have time to do that again. I've missed sooooo much.

[quote=Metrompg almost 2 weeks ago] Prediction! ... The

It's

Props to you man. Now I need to get off my *** and get mine going!

Yeah, start a conversion thread. Keep me company here.

I would, but I have no digital camera to show you guys pics.

But I assure you, there will be such a thread(and a website) eventually. And of the car's antics when the conversion is finished.

The EV list will certainly be the first to hear about it. Speaking of which, John Wayland is probably wondering where in the hell I've been! Ahh, to have 12 hours a day to devote to the internet again...

omgz pimpness MetroMPG! :D

Haha, great video!

Miscellany:

On the motor red line question - got another reply from the Guru:

Hey Darin, that's some great progress you're making.

I'd love to answer your question about the excel chart formatting but I don't have the file handy. I've unsuccessfully tried to recreate it but I'm currently out of town limping along on a Win98 porta-drone. If it makes you feel any better, it took me a while to get excel to cooperate. I can send it to you when I return home at the end of the week.